AGASSIZ: BAHAMAS. 45 



From Clarence Harbor we crossed to the west shore of the island. 

 The salt ponds near Clarence Harbor are separated from the sea by an 

 outer range of seolian hills. From the level of the ponds we gradually 

 rose to the top of the second range, perhaps eighty feet above the sea 

 level, and then gradually passed down the sea face of the slope of the last 

 teolian range to the low western sliore. Here we found a long, narrow 

 lagoon, Salina Flat, formed by the throwing up of a low outer bank of 

 feolian sand recently washed up and inclined at a slight angle to the 

 sea. The lagoon, which skirts the western shore of the southern part of 

 Long Island, is about twenty-five miles in length, extending to the south- 

 ern extremity of the island. To the northward, what is now a flat must 

 have been a wide lagoon ; only a part of the southern end of the bank 

 which once separated it from the sea is now left. In fact, as will be 

 shown later, Long Island, with the string of islands extending north of 

 Exuma as far as Ship Channel at the north end of Exuma Sound, 

 and the line of cays forming the curve of the southeastern face of the 

 Great Bahama Bank as far as Columbus Bank, are the remnants of what 

 must once have been an extensive island. This island gradually became 

 separated, first into a series of islands closely packed together, and later, 

 by greater subsidence, into the innumerable islands now forming the east- 

 ern edge of the Great Bank, the islands and the Great Bank itself being 

 all that now attest the existence of the island or islands which must once 

 have covered the bank inside the 10 fathom limit. 



Long Island is noted for its many caverns. On the road across from 

 Clarence Harbor to the west shore we could not fail to be struck with 

 the many pot-holes, banana-holes, sinks, and other signs of the extensive 

 denudation to which the seolian limestone rocks forming the hills had 

 been subjected. The accumulations of red earth here and there add 

 their testimony to the extensive action of rains, which must have carried 

 otf the surface of the hills as they percolated through the fissures of the 

 rocks and forced their way, little by little, through the porous mass, to 

 form the numerous and often extensive caverns which are met with in 

 every direction.^ 



In many parts of the island we passed through forests with trees of 

 quite a respectable size, such as lignum-vitae, pidgeon plum, tamarinds, 

 and the like, giving us an idea of the fine forests which must have 

 covered some of the islands at the time of their discovery by Columbus, 



1 Perliaps the most extensive caves of the Bahamas are those of East Caicos, 

 described by Sharpies (Proc. Boston Soc.-Nat Hist., XXII. 247, 1883). 



